Video game controllers often provide a lever or trigger to operate an analogue input device, such as a potentiometer. Ideally, a pivot point or rotational axis of the lever or trigger is attached concentric to a rotatable shaft of the potentiometer, providing that an angle of movement of the trigger is equal to an angle of movement of the potentiometer's rotatable shaft. This provides a linearity between user action and game response, and contributes to user satisfaction with the game.
Constraints on game controller design, concerning size, shape and usage characteristics, can preclude concentric attachment of user-activated control to analogue input device. The same constraints, along with cost and reliability concerns, can preclude use of gears or pulleys between the trigger and the input device; gears and pulleys that, if similarly sized, could also provide a linearity of user action to game response.
Accordingly, what is needed is a link mechanism that joins a user-activated control to an analogue input device located a distance away, a link mechanism suitably shaped to cooperate and conform with current constraints on game controller design, and one adapted to provide linear or near linear rotational characteristics between the user-activated control and the analogue input device.